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Immigration Vacation: Battery Park and Castle Clinton

Posted July 6, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.

A lot of people tell me their ancestors came to this country through Ellis Island. When I ask them when their family arrived and they tell me “during the Civil War,” or “in the 1880s,” they are taken aback when I tell them that Ellis Island wasn’t opened yet.

If your family came to America between 1855 and 1891, the odds are they came in through Castle Garden immigration station, what New Yorkers now call “Castle Clinton” or simply “the Battery.”

Castle Garden was not set up to keep immigrants out, it was established to protect immigrants from Americans.

New immigrants were called “greenhorns” in those days. They would arrive in America’s largest city fresh off the farm in Ireland or Germany. Before Castle Clinton, they would simply step off the immigrant ship at a dock along South Street, into the waiting arms of hustlers and thieves. These lowlifes were organized by powerful men who made money off the fleecing of new arrivals.

New York State studied the problem and decided the answer was to create a safe place where immigrants could go to get good information from reputable people working for non-profits set up by immigrant communities. So when immigrants were taken to Castle Clinton, they would be met by members of the Irish Emigrant Society and the German Society. Vincent Cannato, in his book American Passage describes what went on at Castle Garden in its first decades:

At Castle Garden, immigrants received reliable information about travel, jobs, and housing. The newcomers could exchange foreign money for American currency and buy railroad tickets without fear of fraud. An employment bureau helped immigrants find work around the country. The sick and disabled were provided with medical care. Decent food at decent prices was available.

As many as 75 percent of all immigrants to the United States between 1855 and 1891 came through Castle Garden.

Although Castle Garden had been established as a reform institution, by the late 1880s it had become a patronage pool for the New York State Republican Party. Where it had once been staffed largely by immigrants and those sympathetic to them, it now employed party hacks eager to make a buck at the expense of people too powerless to complain.

The fact that it swerved from its original mission should not result in its consignment to the dustbin.

Historian Vincent Cannato’s reflections on Castle Garden’s place in American history bears repeating:

The contrast between Castle Garden and Ellis Island is instructive. Castle Garden was a state operation, created largely at the behest of immigrant aid societies, designed to protect and aid new arrivals to America. Ellis Island was a federal operation, created in response to the national uproar at perceived changes in the type and nature of immigration.

Castle Garden has long since receded from the national memory. As the years passed, the old immigrant station evolved first into the city’s aquarium, then into neglect, and then into a historical reconstruction of the original fort. From here, modern tourists buy tickets for the ferry ride to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

Over 8 million immigrants passed through Castle Garden. Many of their descendants know little of its history, thinking their forebears entered at Ellis Island.

Despite the corruption that plagued Castle Garden, one historian has called it “not only a monumental work, but also a great human expression, which can be placed among the shining achievements of American history.”

Yet it is Ellis Island, not Castle Garden and its albeit imperfect history of benevolence and service, which takes center stage in the nation’s tale of immigration.

If you visit this forgotten immigration landmark, you will find a small fort built in 1812 in response to the British threat. This fort was later converted into Castle Garden. Inside are some of accoutrements of a military post, along with a section of the city’s defenses from colonial days. A room off to the right after you enter contains models depicting the fort at various times in its history, including its days as an immigration station.

Although Castle Clinton takes only about 20 minutes to see, Battery Park is a magnificent place to spend a day. Begin with the Immigrants Monument right outside of Castle Clinton, dedicated to everyone who passed through its gate on the way to a new life in the United States.

There is a plaque in the park dedicated to Emma Lazarus, the poet of the Statue of Liberty who forever linked Liberty with immigration. And there is a statue of the Swedish inventor John Ericsson. During the Civil War this immigrant engineer designed the ironclad ship the Monitor which fought the Confederate ship the Merrimack in an epic battle. He built the ship right across the harbor in the Brooklyn Navy Yards. If you look at his hand, you’ll see he is holding a model of the ship that revolutionized naval warfare and may have saved the Union. If it wasn’t for him, new citizens would have to pass a test in Southern today.

One of the more puzzling monuments, for many visitors, is the Walloon Settlers Monument. Just what is a Walloon? Here is the City Parks Department’s answer: “The Walloons were natives of the County of Hainaut in Belgium who had fled to nearby Holland to escape religious persecution. Made to feel unwelcome in Holland, the Walloons, led by Jesse de Forest, first appealed to the British in 1621 for permission to settle in the British-controlled Virginia colony. When their request to the British was denied, they petitioned the Dutch West India Company to allow them to settle in the Dutch-controlled colony of New Amsterdam. Their application was granted and the Walloons left Holland in March 1624, landing in New York on May 20, 1624.”

A reminder that New York was multi-culti before Boston was even founded!

The Jewish American Tercentenary Flagstaff recalls a neat piece of immigrant history. According to the Parks Department:

In September 1654, Asser Levy and a group of 23 Sephardic Jews fled Recife, Brazil, for New Amsterdam to seek refuge from the Inquisition. Shortly after their arrival, Director General of New Netherland Peter Stuyvesant (1610-1672) attempted to evict them. However, Levy challenged Stuyvesant on such issues as citizenship, the right to bear arms, and property ownership. Levy prevailed, and became the first Jewish citizen of New Amsterdam and a leading advocate for the civil rights of Jews.

Levy was the first kosher butcher in the new colony, the first Jew to serve on guard duty (“watch and wait”) and to own property, and a founding member of Shearith Israel, the first Jewish congregation in North America. Today Shearith Israel’s synagogue is located at Central Park West and 70th Street.

I always like stories of immigrants standing up for themselves and their communities. Nice to know the tradition goes back 350 years in New York!

Offshore from the park is the haunting American Merchant Mariners Monument. It depicts three men on a sinking boat during World War II. The statue is based on a photograph from the war. All three men perished.

The danger of travel virtually closed off immigration to the United States during the war.

When you are in Battery Park, look out onto the harbor. To the right is Ellis Island, the replacement for the Castle Clinton immigration station in 1892. The Verrazano Bridge is off in the distance. After restrictive immigration laws were passed in 1920, immigrant ships would wait off by the Narrows, a tidal strait separating Brooklyn and Staten Island, for the first day of the “immigrant year” and rush into the harbor, hoping to unload their human cargo before the quotas were exceeded.

You can take a free ride on the Staten Island Ferry for a closer look at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

There are also free ferries to the recently opened park on Governor’s Island, which has little to do with immigration, but is a great place for a picnic. The island offers free bike rentals on Fridays.

During the summer, the River to River Festival offers free concerts and dance performances at Castle Clinton and other venues nearby. This hearkens back to the Castle’s role in the 1830s and 1840s when it was an opera house.

The summer is also a great time to visit because the gardens on the paths along the Hudson River are marvelous.

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More Immigration Vacations:

Castle Clinton and Battery Park

Lowell National Historic Site

Lackawanna Coal Mine and Steamtown

Old Croton Aqueduct

Irish Hunger Memorial

The Tenement Museum

Tags : belgian immigrants, immigration history, immigration vacation

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